This page includes information about the aims and scope of IZA Journal of Labor & Development, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

The IZA Journal of Labor & Development covers all aspects of economic development related to issues of human behavior and/or the labor market of developing, emerging or transition countries, including both policy issues and more structural problems.

In particular, the IZA Journal of Labor & Development encourages submissions in subject areas that cover all fields of labor economics in a development context. We welcome original high quality papers, both empirical and theoretical, that deal with issues related to labor and/or labor markets in developing, emerging and transition economies.

The IZA Journal of Labor & Development belongs to the family of field journals in the IZA Journal Series with Springer, also including: (i) the IZA Journal of Labor Economics, (ii) the IZA Journal of Labor Policy, (iii) the IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, and (iv) the IZA Journal of Migration. Each journal publishes 24 articles per year, where each article should be about 10,000 words (including tables, figures and references).

This is a major joint product of the IZA network (and those who want to affiliate with IZA), which plays a central role in the evaluation process. It is an instrument for IZA to foster production of knowledge in the areas where IZA sees need.

The aim of the new IZA Journal Series is to provide a high-quality, peer-reviewed outlet for papers, where the key characteristic of the submission procedure is the fast decision making and publication process. Acceptance/rejection decisions are expected to be made within one month; publication is expected within one month after submission of the final manuscript. The fast process from the submission to the acceptance/rejection decision is guaranteed by (i) an advanced desk rejection policy and (ii) the fact that only those papers refereed that require minor revisions are accepted while those not accepted are rejected without a detailed referee report. This requires the submission of manuscripts that are considered ready by the author(s) for direct publication if found suitable by the editorial team.

The IZA Journals is an online journal series accessible through SpringerOpen. This implies that electronic access to all five new journals is provided freely and permanently worldwide immediately upon publication.

Open access

All articles published by IZA Journal of Labor & Development are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

For authors who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BioMed Central can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs for IZA Journal of Labor & Development are covered by IZA - Institute for the Study of Labor, so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Indexing services

SpringerOpen is working closely with Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development will be available.

Publication and peer review process

Acceptance/rejection decisions are expected to be made within 4 weeks; publication is expected within two months after submission of the final manuscript. The managing editor can suggest to the author to reallocate a submission to one of the other four journals if considered more appropriate. The fast process from the submission to the acceptance/rejection decision is guaranteed by (i) an advanced desk rejection policy and (ii) the fact that only those papers refereed are accepted that require minor revisions while those not accepted are rejected without a detailed referee report. This requires the submission of manuscripts that are considered ready by the author/s for direct publication if found suitable by the editorial team.

The APC of 800 Euros is waived for those invited to submit and for those who actively support the IZA journals by refereeing a certain number of articles.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My IZA Journal of Labor & Development, a personalized section of the site.

Portability of peer review

In order to support efficient and thorough peer review, we aim to reduce the number of times a manuscript is re-reviewed after rejection from IZA Journal of Labor & Development, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Therefore, please note that, if a manuscript is not accepted for publication in IZA Journal of Labor & Development and the authors choose to submit a revised version to another SpringerOpen journal, we will pass the reviews on to the other journal's editors at the authors' request. We will reveal the reviewers' names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another SpringerOpen journal.

Reprints

Supplements

IZA Journal of Labor & Development will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Correspondence concerning articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development is encouraged. A 'post a comment' feature is available on all articles published by IZA Journal of Labor & Development. Comments will be moderated by the editorial office (see our Comment policy for further information) and linked to the full-text version of the article, if suitable.

Editorial standards

SpringerOpen is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In order to safeguard the quality of SpringerOpen journal publications, Springer has developed a policy on Publishing Integrity which is in line with the philosophy of COPE.

We follow the principle that we have a prime duty to maintain the integrity of the scientific record. Springer’s Policy on Publishing Integrity addresses:

Clear definitions of what violation of Publishing Integrity is.

A manual on how to identify such a violation (in the document referred to as an Act of Misconduct).

Clear (COPE) examples of what such an Act of Misconduct looks like in practice.

Clearly defined actions which have to be undertaken by the Editor and Springer when such an Act is a clearly proven fact.

Q & A – a useful list of Questions and Answers on the definition of Publishing Integrity.

Please find the full document of Springer's Policy on Publishing Integrity here.

Data and materials release

Submission of a manuscript to IZA Journal of Labor & Development implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should, in the first instance, contact the
Editor-in-Chief
who will provide details of the journal's complaints procedure.

Competing interests

Submitting authors are asked to declare that they have observed the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. A statement confirming this will be added to all submitted articles.

Plagiarism detection

IZA Journal of Labor & Development's publisher, SpringerOpen, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In cases of suspected plagiarism CrossCheck is available to the editors of IZA Journal of Labor & Development to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts by using the plagiarism detection tool iThenticate. CrossCheck is a multi-publisher initiative allowing screening of published and submitted content for originality.

Citing articles in IZA Journal of Labor & Development

Articles in IZA Journal of Labor & Development should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Why publish your article in IZA Journal of Labor & Development?

High visibility

IZA Journal of Labor & Development's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

IZA Journal of Labor & Development offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files).
Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through IZA Journal of Labor & Development and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in IZA Journal of Labor & Development gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example to relevant databases and papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on IZA Journal of Labor & Development's pages and on the SpringerOpen homepage.

In addition, articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in IZA Journal of Labor & Development retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the copyright and license agreement.

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.